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"do you have any cocaine?" i ask. "so these four guys are hitting on me, right? and they keep buying me drinks and telling me in spanish how beautiful i am. hey, i think that waiter is checking me out," she continues. i slump back in my chair and stare at her. she's thin and toned, my height, each ear pierced three times, short dark spiky hair. she looks a little like winona ryder in a men's jacket and an 80's knockoff tee, also drinking bad coffee. "so then i get so drunk. i must've had four drinks, plus four shots after that, and my dad had to carry me back to the hotel room. god, my dad's an asshole. my whole life, he's always fucking favored my brother," she continues. the waiter comes to refill my coffee and i let him, even though i've already had four cups. he glances at her, gesturing with the coffeepot, and she pretends not to notice. he shrugs and walks away. "and, i mean, he always had more presents at christmas. ridiculous. ha, i TOLD you that guy was checking me out. so anyway," she continues. i raise my eyebrow and stop listening to what she's saying. i bring my hand to my face, and it's greasy and warm, and i feel like all of a sudden i'm twelve years old again. which wouldn't be so bad, because i was so sad in such an innocent way because i didn't love anybody and that was ok. i don't love anybody now and i'm anemic. my hair is parted unironically over my right eye and my fingernail beds show a dull white underneath where dark bits of dirt have collected under the nail. "you don't look like a katie," i say in my most conversational tone. "thanks. so i told him, i said, who took a drug test and failed it? not me, nick. who came home drunk and stoned every night in high school? not me, nick. who crashed the car? not me," she continues. i give up trying to find an opportune time to tell her i have to take a piss and look down at my arms. i study the slowly fading scars on my wrist and forearm and glance at her arms. on the top of her right arm are several vertical white lines, and a word i make out to spell "whore" below them. what a fucking narcissist, i sneer in my head. "so yeah, I'M not bitter," she continues, laughing at her own brilliant sarcastic wit. she excuses herself to go take a piss and i smell the air she moves in her wake. curve for men. goddamn it. i love curve for men. we get in her car and she continues to talk, this time about her trip to a mental hospital. she is not schooled, apparently, in the etiquette of conversation, where at the end of an anecdote you pause to let the other compare and contrast his or her story with your own, or at the very least offer that a friend or friend of a friend has had a similar experience. i say yeah" and "uh huh" and "wow" at the appropriate places and smoke her cigarettes, trying desperately not to smell her cologne. she turns on the radio and wonderwall begins to play. everything starts flooding back, but i don't care, because it's the first time in two years i can listen to this song without crying. i turn it up and sing along and ignore the stupid girl still talking in the driver's seat because she's nothing and i'm nothing, we're just people who will eventually hurt each other if i end up fucking her and i will never again have a first love who probably was never in love with me in the first place and i will never love anyone that hard again, so this girl, she's nothing, and i'm nothing, and no one ever saves anybody, and i shut the radio off. and then on again, and when the song finishes, i shut it off again. i tell her again that she doesn't look like a katie, and she gives me another cigarette. i look at her hands and they're not pale enough. no one's are.
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